Postponement centers around delaying activities in the supply chain until real information about the markets are available”. (Yang and Burns, 2003) Another definition about postponement is late customization or delayed product differentiation. In other words, it means delay the point of differentiation processed in a supply chain as much as possible until the supply chain is cost effective (Grag and Lee, 1998). Bowersox & Closs (1990) have classified postponements into three forms: time postponement, location postponement and form postponement. Time and location postponement belong to logistics postponement. From the logistics point of view, the postponement has five components, which involve labelling, packing, assembly, manufacturing and time. (Zinn and Bowersox, 1988)
In recent years, with the acceleration of the globalization process, the number of types of goods and personalized service of customer demand increasingly, the postponement strategy of supply chain management has been paid more attention. Postponement strategy is successful in a wide range of supply chain sectors such as automotive, food and fashion, which require high differentiation. (Li et al., 2007) For example, many food manufacturers change their label or trademarks to closer to needs of their customers. Thereby, this strategy greatly reduced costs and increased the market share.
REPLY substantively to the question below.
1. How does a product’s life cycle stage affect the
postponement/speculation choice? Why is this the
case?
2. What do the authors mean by “value profile” when
discussing determinants of postponement? Given the
importance of value profile, what role does product
development play in enabling postponement?
3. How do product design characteristics, particularly
whether a product is standardized or customized,
affect postponement strategies?
4. How does delivery frequency affect postponement
strategy selection and why?
5. How does increasing demand uncertainty affect the
choice of postponement strategy?
6. What role do economies of scale with regard to
manufacturing or logistics play in affecting
postponement/speculation strategies?
Discussion questions are to be answered in proper paragraph format, which includes a topic sentence, three to five sentences addressing the details of the answer to the question(s) asked, and a closing sentence, which repeats or reflects the key words or ideas from the topic sentence. Proper English grammar and sentence form should be used in all sentences. One paragraph per question.
